I refer to the letter ASM shares: Maybank so lame .

I had hoped to divert some of my fixed deposits into the ASM/Wawasan shares. On the second day of launch of the ASM share, I went to two banks, RHB and Maybank, in Subang Jaya.

At RHB I was told that they ran out of passbooks. When I enquired when they were getting more passbooks, the officer merely shrugged his shoulders. Yes, there were shares for sale, if I had a passbook, I was told.

How was I going get my hands on some shares? I went over to Maybank and was told it was finished. I was informed to get there early for the launch of the Wawasan shares the following week.

So on the morning of the following Monday, I went over to CIMB and got a form and a number, ‘84'. On my question of payment, I was informed that cheques were not accepted, neither were bank drafts or postal orders. I couldn't quite believe my ears!

Only cold hard cash if you do not have an account with them. What kind of banks do we have in Malaysia that do not accept cheques, even their own? It must be a kind of test they were giving us wannabe investors I thought.

Not to be deterred, I went to my bank and withdrew cash, inserted it into my socks and went to RHB where I was told that there were no more forms. I got a number though, ‘152'.

Seeing the long queue, I decided to go over to CIMB at the Wisma Sime Darby in Subang Jaya, thinking with number ‘84' I had a decent chance. How wrong I was for an hour later, he number of applications that had been processed was exactly ‘zero'.

A sign said the system was ‘off-line', just like at JPJ. After waiting half-an-hour I decided that I had enough and went off. On the way out, I passed by a Maybank branch and popped in to have a look. There I was told that all the shares were sold out throughout the country.

It all dawned on me later when I read in the papers about Indians getting upset that they couldn't buy any shares as they were sold out. How can anyone buy any share if the forms run out?

More interestingly, with the 50% of allocated to bumis, with very low take-up, how can the government say that this it has enabled as many Malaysians as possible to own these shares? Why would any sane bumiputera buy the ASM/Wawasan shares when the ASB has better returns? I know I wouldn't if I were one.

So the question is why do they do this to us? Giving us crumbs and expect us to be grateful? Isn't governing supposed to be taking care of all the people, government supporters and opposition alike?